By Dan Moore May 16, 2013

San Francisco's Callow makes music for standing alone in a hallway after somebody important to you has just let you know they don't feel anything you're feeling. It's not that it's sad or self-indulgent (the way we want to be in those moments); it's that nothing in these songs insists on itself. Callow's distended riffs and droning vocals would fit perfectly in the score to your heartbreak, with singer Red wailing, "I want to make conversation, but you won't," the instruments rumbling on one undulating note, and then a gradual fade to black. They'll be joined at Trunk Space by locals Snow Songs, whose bilingual vocals and clean, sharp-elbowed riffs can twist from cool detachment to serene warmth in one chord change, and Former Friends of Young Americans, whose sidelong guitars and pretty, flat-affect harmonies collapse into noisy, surprising, immediate hooks. All three bands' unconventional sounds aren't about willful obscurity so much as finding unusual ways to be direct; some of what you hear Saturday night might not read immediately as pop music, but it'll still be in... More >>>